With the advent of online stock brokers, trading has become cheaper. However, with fees up to $10 per trade as with E-Trade, trading on a small scale can be expensive. Meet Robinhood – an app that make trading stocks free and easy.

What you'll need

An iPhone or Android phone
A bank account with money in it
A couple days of patience

Getting set up

First, download the Robinhood app from your app store. Go through the sign-up process. Verifying your bank account will take a couple of days. You can continue reading this post in the meantime.

Resources

While you could pick your own stocks, it doesn't hurt to get a second opinion. The Robinhood subreddit and stocks subreddit are good sources of information.

Trading

When you're ready to trade, search for the stocks you're interested in and click the "+" next to them. Also transfer some money into Robinhood from the banking section. There are two main order types: market orders and limit orders. Market orders execute at the current price, while limit orders execute when the price goes over (when selling) or under (when buying) the price you set.

Margin

If you have at least a little over $2000 in your account, you can purchase Robinhood Gold, a monthly premium service that gives you access to something called margin, among other features. Margin is basically borrowed money that you can use to buy stocks with. There's no interest charged on it in Robinhood. This document shows how much margin you are allowed to purchase with the amount of money you have in your account.

Congratulations!

You can now trade stocks without fees. Stick with it long enough and you'll get access to the web interface (still in development) and options (also still in development).